Kitty 327 : Epi 1: Miracles Lost
by BattyBigSister
Summary: Zack has an unexpected encounter with an old friend and a mysterious couple pay a visit to Logan. *Re-written and extended* *Re-write complete ; *
1. Chapter 1 Zack 'Reunion'

**Series: **Kitty327

**Episode: **1

**Title: **Miracles Lost****

**Disclaimer: **I don't own Dark Angel. I'd love to, but I don't.

**Author:** Big Sister

**Rating:** PG-13

**Description:** Zack has an unexpected encounter with an old friend and a mysterious couple pay a visit to Logan.

**Timeline:** First part happens between '411 on the DL' and '… and Jesus Brought a Casserole'. Second is anytime after 'Some Assembly Required', but before 'Freak Nation'.

**Author's Note:** To those who read this prior to the re-write, will probably want to start reading around _Ch 4_. That's where the new stuff starts. Unless of course you where planning on reading it all again to refresh your memory. In which case don't let me stop you.

**Author's Note 2:** I'm not a shipper or a Logan-basher, so in my stories Logan gets humane treatment (as in accordance with the international bill of human rights) and I still haven't made my mind up as to who gets the girl (Max) in this one yet. Hum … what do you think … Normal? Maybe not, but somebody's gonna get our Maxie by the end of this series, because it would be boring otherwise. So let me know whom you want.

_______________

Chapter 1 

Max came out of the doorway of the Crash with Original Cindy and Sketchy in tow, completely oblivious to the fact that she was being watched. They were talking and laughing at something Sketchy had just said. Not a joke exactly, more laughing at him.

He seemed to sulk for a few moments, until Cindy hit him hard on the back. The blow sent him reeling forwards. Original Cindy was not a transgenic, but she didn't have to be to send Sketchy flying.

By the time he had picked himself back off the floor Max was already perched on top of her motorcycle and, with a wave farewell to the Original Cindy, she shot off into the cloudy night leaving her friends to make their own way home.

The woman, who had been observing her from the shadowy shelter of a nearby alleyway, drew back disappointed. She didn't have a motorcycle or even a car at her disposal, but even if she had she couldn't have followed the pretty dark-haired girl for long and still expect to remain inconspicuous. Not at this hour in a post-Pulse city where both means of transport were expensive luxuries that few people could easily afford and which both entailed far too many stops at sector guards, at which the pursued would have time to turn around and take note of what little traffic there was and where any normal person (let alone a transgenic) would have been bound to notice the repeated presence of any vehicle. No, she would have to call it a day for tonight.

She smiled at her joke and then frowned at herself for being amused by her own poor humour. Not that she didn't like a good joke, but then her jokes were rarely good.

The woman was about ten to fifteen years older than Max and shabbily dressed in old clothes that didn't really suit her, but in which she felt comfortable. Her light brown hair, once her pride and joy, now needed washing, but had been pulled back into a long plait that reached right the way down her back, for the sake of keeping it tidy. She looked tired and very skinny, a state that was emphasised by the fact that she was rather tall for a woman, although she was used to working with far taller men, and then there was the rather mismatched dark brown scarf around her neck that she wore to conceal her barcode. Had Max seen her she would not have recognised the woman, although she most certainly would have done so seventeen years ago.

Her finely tuned senses (Developed at Manticore, where else?) had told Max's observer hours ago that she being watched herself, so she wasn't at all surprised when someone aimed a blow to her head. Aimed was the key word - he missed. She had ducked well in time to avoid the punch.

Checking behind her to make sure that Original Cindy and Sketchy still hadn't noticed anything, she grabbed her assailant's arm and pulled him further down the alley holding a finger to her lips. Having expected a countering attack, he was rather taken aback by the action, so he didn't struggle. That was a mercy for her, as she was far too weak to have controlled him if he had.

As soon as she was out of earshot of anyone leaving Crash, she spoke in a horse, but urgent whisper, "It's all right, Zack. I don't work for Lydecker. I've spent half my life protecting you two from him, I'm hardly going to betray you now."

His jaw dropped. Rather mutely for him he murmured, "How … how the hell do you …"

"Know your name?" she smiled, "I knew you at Manticore, and your sister too, though you were both a little too young when we were separated to remember me now. Shame though, I had hoped you might have some vague recollection of me, you weren't quite as little as her, but obviously not."

"How little exactly?" he asked slowly, gathering his wits again.

"You were about six. Maxie was nearly three."

"_Maxie!_" The use of his nickname for his baby sister took him off guard again. He frowned and shifted his weight edgily on his feet. He was beginning to feel very uneasy around this woman. At first he had simply mistrusted her because she had been following Max, but now there was something more …

She saw his reaction and smiled ruefully. "I'm sorry," she sighed, "That just slipped out. I always used to call her that at Manticore."

"How do I know I can trust you," he snapped, "For all I know you could be a spy for Lydecker! You could be bugged! He could be listening to this right now!" he added, disgusted with himself for not thinking of that possibility sooner.

Her eyes flashed! Anger and something he could only describe as pain shown out at him. The rest of her face however set itself back into a well-worn cool hardened expression. Her lips slowly parted and she gave him a complete and accurate list of every single place he had stayed since his last escape from Manticore. 

She left nothing out. Each account included not only the address, but the amount of time he had spent there; contacts he had in the area; places he had visited; siblings he had met (mentioned by name, not number); everything. The rendition took nearly twenty minutes and by the end of it Zack was speechless … and horrified. How the hell did she know! Not even his siblings knew where he was when he wasn't with them.

"As you can see, Zack," she nearly smirked as she told him, "If I had any intention of betraying you, Lydecker would have already had you surrounded by a Tac team ages ago." 

"How … ?" he stuttered to halt, too stunned to go on.

She nodded simply, understandingly, "I gathered most that by stopping Lydecker from finding it out. Destroying files, silencing informants that kind of thing. The rest, well, I do check up on you regularly, I'll have to admit to that."

I gathered most that by stopping Lydecker from finding it out.

It stung. It hurt. The words ripped into him like hungry tiger with a sack full of fresh meat. She knew most of the places he had been supposedly _hiding _in through the very people he had hiding from. One of the things he was most proud of about himself and his siblings was the way they had avoided detection for over ten years – and that had just been ridiculed and reduced to nothing more than a pathetic amateur's attempt at 'hide and seek', a mess that someone else had had to clean up for them. He could've killed her. Could've. Probably should've, but he didn't. There was something about her eyes. The way she looked at him …

She, for her own part, had sensed the effect her words had on him. A totally unintentional effect. She had been careless with her choice of words and the pained look in his sharp eyes punished her worse for that than any amount of physical pain could ever have done. Even if she had been able to feel it.

Tentatively she reached out and laid her hand on his shoulder. He looked as if he was going to jerk it off, so she interrupted quickly, "Look Zack. I've been meaning to say this for a long time. Eleven years almost. I'm proud of you." Zack stared at her, confused. "Very, very proud of all of you," she went on, "Escaping from Manticore; keeping your heads and staying hidden despite all the odds – Heck - that took more downright courage than anything I have ever heard or seen before or since. And  ... I'm especially proud of you, Zack. The courage you showed protecting your brothers and sisters. It's …" she paused, searching for a suitable word, "It's glorious."

Zack would rather have gone skipping into Manticore and kissed Lydecker smack bang on the lips than admitted it, but her words did have the intended effect this time. Not only had his anger vanished, but he also felt pleased and even grateful for them. It was something he had been wishing somebody would say for a long time. His sibling were always too busy either complaining about his interference or begging for his help to do so themselves and there was no one else. Not even a kind of parent figure like most kids would've had.

He blinked at the thought. Where had that come from? He recovered himself quickly and was going to tell her to mind her own business and where she could stick her pride in his '_glorious_' actions, when something else crossed his mind.

"Your from Manticore? Transgenic?" he growled. It wasn't really a question. She could see that, but it annoyed her all the same.

"_Yes,_" she sighed with all the sarcasm she could muster, "Forgive me, I thought we had covered that. You know, back when I said 'I knew you at Manticore'. _Remember that?_ "

"Then where's your barcode?"

"Where do you think? Back of my neck, maybe? Just because I'm ten years older than you doesn't mean Manticore had to tattoo it on my forehead instead." But she understood what he was asking. Grumbling, she pulled of her scarf and turned around, lifting the plaid of hair out of the way so that he could see the series of black lines that ran across the nape of her neck.

He gasped in surprise. "Kitty!" His face had suddenly started glowing like a child's in a sweet store, she noticed as turned back around to face him.

She grinned. "Yeah, my boy, it's me all right."


	2. Chapter 2 Logan 'The Beginning'

Chapter 2 

Zack couldn't remember Max anymore let alone lost friends from his early childhood, Logan thought as he chewed on the end of a pencil and regarded his two visitors. One was a very big very muscular man in his early thirties with a full head of boisterous light brown hair that was just starting to turn grey, the other was a tall skinny woman of the same age, with long hair of same colour as the man's that been plated to keep it tidy. They were both dressed in rather shabby clothes and they both looked extremely tired and in desperate need of a good meal.

Apparently they were both X3s, 'siblings' from the same unit. They had shown him their barcodes to confirm it, but those distinctive marks had been covered up again now; his by a high neck collar that was starting to fray; hers by a dirty brown scarf that didn't really go with the rest her clothes.

Both the two men had been totally silent for whole of the five minutes they had been each other's company. Only she had spoken.

When they had opened the door she had told him that they were X3s and that was when they briefly uncovered their barcodes. Then she had asked if they could come in for a moment. After they were both seated on the coach in front of the window (Logan was in his wheelchair at the time, so didn't need to find a seat.) she had told him quite frankly that she was looking for Zack. Apparently she was a friend of his from his early childhood and she had kept tabs on his whereabouts ever since (without revelling his location to Lydecker, she added) but after Manticore had burned down she had lost track of him. She knew that Zack had been briefly reunited with Max and through her with Logan and that this had caused some serious problems due to his treatment at Manticore (those were her words not Logan's) and that they had been forced to rehabilitate him as a result. She just didn't know where and she would like too. She didn't need to speak to him, but she did want to see him to make sure that he was all right.

That was all she had said and she had said the entire lot without letting any hint of emotion contaminate her voice. A prefect military report. Logan didn't like it. 

On the one hand doing small favours like this for transgenics seemed to be turning into something of a habitual pastime. On the other, this was Zack. Zack, who didn't trust anyone. Zack, who never kept any contacts or friends except his fellow escapees. Zack, who if he started remembering who he was would very likely set off to Seattle to blow Logan's head up, literally. No thanks - he wasn't risking that! He had been lucky to escape with his life the first time. If Max hadn't been there … 

Still he couldn't just turn them away. Max would kill him herself if she found that he had treated members of her family like that! Heck, he wouldn't have anyway. Eyes Only was in the business of distributing information, not concealing it.

Still … this was Zack and he wasn't entirely sure if he trusted anyone who wasn't a fellow X5 from his unit, let alone make friends with them, even if they were X-series too. No, Logan took that back. He was sure Zack didn't trust anyone who wasn't a fellow X5 from his unit, even if they were X-series.

"Look, I'm sorry," he sighed at length, "I'm going to need more information than this."

"What sort of information?"

"I dunno," her eyebrows raised sharply at this, Logan noticed. Nobody at Manticore would have been so imprecise as to ask a rhetorical question. "Do you have names maybe? How did you meet Zack? For that matter – how the hell did you keep tabs on him without Lydecker's knowledge? How the hell did you do anything without Lydecker's knowledge? I find your story kinda hard to believe."

The transgenic couple turned their heads towards each other, their eyes locking in a long hard stare. It seemed almost like they were fighting each other with those glares, Logan thought, but then quite suddenly they nodded simultaneously, as if they had come to decision. The women turned her face back to face him. Her eyes had softened a little, Logan noticed. Her 'brother', however, continued to stare at the side of her head. Clearly he had just lost whatever battle of wills had taken place.

"You asked for my name, Mr Cale?" This was the woman speaking. Her voice had adopted a horse quality now, making it more tense and emotional, quite different from the flat military drone she had used earlier.

"Logan." He corrected with some surprise, not only was this the first time she had addressed him directly, he hadn't expected something as refined and upper-class as the use of his surname from a member of a group of people who didn't use names at all, let alone a system of social classes.

"As you wish. My name is Katherine Maria Estellar, X3-327, and my brother is Nicolas Simon Estellar, X3-326. Back at Manticore they used a lot of the same DNA to create the two of us, just changing key factors like our different genders, so we decided to use the same surname. As for your other questions – I'm going to have to tell the whole story to answer those, aren't I?"

Her eyes lost all their military focus at that point. They really had softened. Her whole face had softened. Logan realised with a start that she was smiling. A warm clear smile that made her look almost human, every trace of Manticore training vanishing from her features like a cold winter frost under warm spring sunshine. Logan suddenly found himself replying with a grin, as he sat back in his chair to listen …

_A soldier crept silently into the lab that had temporarily been turned into a nursery. At ten years of age she was the youngest of her unit and she knew without a doubt that her older brothers and sisters would consider her self-appointed quest both foolish and wrong for the simple fact there were no orders for it. If they found out they would report her for certain. But she didn't care – she had to see._

_Silently she pressed her tiny shaven head to the door and listened concentrating with all her might. Nothing. Any other room this important in Manticore would have been locked with at least an iris-scanner, but staff needed to be able enter and leave this room quickly. There was merely an ordinary lock, which it didn't take her long to pick. _

_Cautiously she opened the door just a crack and scanned the room with her sharp hazel eyes. There was no one inside, so she entered noiselessly remembering all the stealth techniques in which she had been drilled. Then she saw it. A tiny bundle lying in a small box of clear plastic in the centre of the room, but it was paced out of her reach on top of a metal case, which was several heads taller than her and from which her sensitive ears could pin-point the whine of electrical equipment. _

_She would have to take a chair from a nearby desk to peer inside. A tactical problem, her sharp Manticore-drilled mind noted, because if somebody disturbed her she wouldn't have time to return the chair to it's former position before vanishing back into her dormitory. Even if they didn't see her, they would know someone had been here by the rearrangement of the furniture. Still that was a risk she would have to take._

_But … once she stood up on that chair, once she saw inside the box, all thoughts of tactics and problems vanished from her mind as the young soldier's heart surrendered itself entirely to the male who would possesses it for the rest of his life. This was what – who – she had come to see. She had heard the rumours first from several nurses chatting idly as they put her and her sisters through their regular medical check-ups and she had persevered until she eventually located his position._

_Him. She watched the tiny chest heave and fall beneath his blanket. She gazed at his peaceful sleeping expression.  He was the first of his series. The first one they had successfully created. The first X5. Her baby brother. Before she even realised it her hand slipped through one of the great holes in the plastic and begun to stroke his tiny head. Across the soft blonde down that was too scarce for them to shave away._

_The baby awoke beneath her gentle caress, but he didn't cry out. He just lay there peaceful, gazing up at her with enormous green eyes that seemed too huge for his tiny little face, as she gave him the first loving looks and the first affectionate touch of his tiny little life._

_"Would you like to hold him?" a voice broke through the silence. She jumped away from the box. Fear washing through her. She had stopped paying attention. She had been caught. A nurse stood in doorway. She had seen her. She would report her. She would never see the baby again!_

_"Wait!" the woman cried, "Don't! It's all right! It's okay, I'm not gonna … I should really. Report you, I mean. Your not supposed to …  X3-327, isn't it? Do you want hold him?" The child paused … afraid and confused. The woman sighed and took a few steps forwards. A mistake! Startled the child jumped backwards. Ready to flee. But the woman was beside the incubator now. Carefully she lifted the baby out of his blankets and held him out to her. The girl watched, petrified._

_"Would you like to hold him?" the nurse asked again._

_This time the child came forward, if hesitantly, the temptation of the baby was clearly too much for her. It somehow managed to override both her enhanced natural instincts, which told her to run, and military training, which told her to kill the nurse and then run._

_Instead, she held her arms out cautiously. Hesitantly.  The woman gently placed the baby in the child's waiting embrace and arranged her arms around the tiny creature. "You have to support his head like this … see … there you go" The nurse stepped away watching the girl with the baby._

_He had her entranced once again. His little fists reached up and started clutching at her Government Issue nightgown. "What's his barcode?" the child breathed softly, glazing down into his huge green eyes._

_"X5-599" _

Katherine stopped, shivering slightly. Logan wondered for a moment if she was cold, but her clothes looked warm enough and the room was actually beginning to feel slightly overheated. Then he noticed the tear on her cheek. She stood up, moving away to stare out of a nearby window. She couldn't have known it, but she was standing exactly were Max had stood that time when she had that confession to make about Raifer.

"I returned almost every night after that," the woman continued more slowly, keeping her eyes fixed on some point beyond the window, "The nurse was always there. Felicity, her name was. She let me look after the baby. Taught me how to care for him properly; bottle-fed him, change his diaper, that kind of thing … until one night just a few weeks later …"

_The little girl picked the lock and pushed the door open quickly, eager to inside to see the baby. "Felicity?" she called out and then gasped in horror, because the face staring down at her was not that of the cheerful nurse – in fact she never saw her again – no, this was Lydecker._

_Helplessly she stumbled a few steps backwards, horrified eyes fixed on his face. She knew what had happened. Her siblings had noticed her empty bed and reported it. Lydecker had decided to catch her red-handed. It was that simple. It was no use running either. His eyes had been fixed on her from the moment the door opened. She was caught. Her eyes darted from Lydecker to the two armed General Infantry at his side. There was no escape._

_And then the baby started crying. The sound tore her heart out. Lydecker turned his head distracted. He raised a hand. What was actually going to do was uncertain, but before she even knew what she was doing, she darted between him and the baby so fast that they couldn't even see her, let alone stop her._

_"Don't hurt my baby!" the words tumbled out her, torn from her desperate young soul. She tensed her whole body, ready to fly at them if they took another step closer._

_Lydecker stared at her. One of the two GIs scrambled back onto his feet. She had knocked him over on her way past. Lydecker was still staring at her._

_"Your baby?" he gasped. He was shocked. He had expected to come out here to frighten a disobedient child, not a face this … this … "Your baby? In what way 'your baby' 327? You're not his surrogate. He has none of your DNA. Yet you claim to be his – what – mother?"_

_"His carer," she whispered defensively. These were thoughts she hadn't even voiced to Felicity, but she meant them. Conceived of a childish fantasy and impossible for her to implement, but she meant them. Nothing was more important to her than that tiny bundle of humanity in his plastic cot. Even Lydecker could see that._

_It was weird, but something in those frantic hazel eyes touched him deeply in a way that nothing had since his wife died. He almost smiled, but caught himself just in time._

_"327!" he growled, " You have disobeyed a direct order. Violated Manticore protocol. Compromised the security of a very valuable piece of equipment." At this he indicated the still wailing infant, "Do not expect to go unpunished. You will report to Private Regents here after drill each day for a series of punishment tasks until I say otherwise. However … this is the first there has been any problem with you, 327. So … so long as this remains the **only** time there is a problem with you, and … seeing as there is a vacancy to fill, now you've caused the removal of the current chief nurse, you may continue with your uncalled for services as 599's 'carer'."_

_Her heart skipped a beat, her eyebrows rose sharply and her expression began to broaden into a grin._

_Lydecker noticed the change in her features. "So long as this remains the only time there is a problem with you," he warned again._

_She came to attention sharply and saluted._

Logan chuckled slightly. "So the old boy had a soft spot after all!" He didn't see her wince when he said that. "So how long were you doing these 'punishment tasks' for?" he asked out of idle curiosity.

She laughed suddenly. Sarcastically. "You know when Manticore burned down a while back … I was still doing them."

Logan smiled sheepishly, "Should've guessed."__


	3. Chapter 3 Logan 'The End'

Chapter 3 

Logan glanced at his watch. They had been here for nearly two hours! It was beginning to get kind of late and he was beginning to feel kind of hungry.

Normally Max would have dropped by for something to eat, or an Eyes Only mission, by now and they could have had dinner together, but she had said that Original Cindy wanted her for something at Crash. Max hadn't been specific with the details, but it sounded like it involved a bet, Alec, him losing and some kind of gruesome torture. Logan guessed he wouldn't be seeing either of them tonight … still that didn't mean he had to eat alone.

"Look, I'm starving. How about you two join me for dinner and we can talk more then?"

Katherine looked at him blankly. 'My God,' he thought, 'How thin she is!' He knew that despite their insatiable appetites transgenics could survive on very little nourishment for a long time. For her to look that bad … he wondered when had she even seen food last.

"That would be great. Thanks." Logan spun his head round startled. It had been the man who spoke. Nicolas, wasn't it?

Whoever he was, he had a broad grin on his face now. Logan noticed that he looked far more animated after the mention of food. "We haven't eaten in ages."

"Well, I make great chicken casserole."

 "Sounds perfect," the man paused suddenly and turned to the woman by the window, "_Doesn't it, Kitty_?" Nicolas, or whatever, fixed his sister with a piercing stare.

She shrugged, moving away from the window to sit back down. "I guess … Thank you."

"Good girl," the man sighed, turning almost apologetically to Logan. "I'm sorry. It's just that I haven't gotten her to eat at all since Zack vanished. I know she's transgenic and all ... but still … she can't survive on nothing. It's not like she ate much to start with."

Logan nodded and wheeled across to his kitchen. The man followed him leaving his sister on the coach.

"No appetite. That's unusual in a transgenic, isn't it?" he asked, remembering how often he had seen Max and her siblings wolfing down food even at the most unlikely of times.

"Very, but … you know … since … I guess she's too busy worrying all the time to eat much. Gets better at times, then it gets worse again."

"Well, I guess there's a lot to worry about since Manticore burned down … err … Nicolas, isn't it?"

"Call me Nick, and nah, her appetite went way before that. When they took the kids."

Logan glanced up from the chicken he had been cutting up. "The kids?" 

"Yeah." Nick grinned, when he spoke his deep voice grated so that it sounded almost like a growl, but somehow the effect wasn't intimidating – it was actually strangely pleasant to listen too, "What! Did you think she's the only carer in the family? She did such a good job with her boy that Lydecker started assigning the rest of us charges too. Gave them to the girls mainly, but as I'm kinda twinned with the kitten in there I ended up with one too. Although she won't remember me. She was too little when they took them."

"Who was she?" Logan asked, taking a saucepan from the cupboard, "And who's 'the kitten'?"

"The kitten? Oh that's one of the many, many things I call Kitty. Katherine." Nick sighed, but he was only stretching. The rapid flow of his words continued as fast ever. It was strange how a former soldier, used to speaking only when spoken too, could suffer from such an acute case of verbal diarrhoea, but then again maybe that was why. There was finally someone willing to listen to him.

"Sandeman gave us our original names apparently." Nick continued, "He seems to like proper long names, but in a military environment they get worn down into much shorter ones really quickly."

Logan's eyes narrowed, "What do you know about him? Sandeman. Have you ever met him?"

Nick just shook his head, "No. He used to run Manticore before the Committee assigned it to Lydecker, but we were just kids back then and we rarely saw him anyway. Then Sandeman finally vanished completely a while back."

"Oh, right."

"You're looking for him too? Why?"

"Huh?" Logan hesitated.

"The look on your face when I mentioned Sandeman." Nick explained coolly. His voice sounded a little harder now. He wasn't exactly menacing, but … it was clear that Nick was no fool. He didn't consider Logan a threat, in fact for some reason he obviously trusted him, but clearly not enough to give information without being satisfied as to what it was going to be used for.

Logan noticed the other man's large muscular hand resting on the table. He had seen the kind of damage Max's dainty little fist was capable of; he didn't even want to image what a blow from those massive paws would feel like.

"Fine. Yeah, we are. He might be able to help out with a little _problem_ of ours. Why are you after him?" 

"What kinda problem?" Nick just looked curious, nothing more.

"Manticore virus," Logan didn't want to be distracted, "Why are you after him?"

"It's a long story." Nick scratched his head; for once he seemed unsure of how to proceed. "Do … do you know a … transgenic by the name of Joshua?" 

Startled, Logan turned his wheelchair around to stare at the other man. "Yes, he's … a friend." He said cautiously.

Nick looked surprised and then suddenly pleased,  "Oh … great! Hope he's doing okay! Joshua was an old friend of ours at Manticore when we were kids. Well, to the extent anyone was friends there," a shadow passed over his face, "Anyway he kept talking about his 'Father', Sandeman, you know, and well once the place burned we thought we ought to find this 'Father', because somebody's going to have to take care of Joshua and his lot, and well, he made them so - he might."

"I see," Logan said, stirring the deliciously wafting concoction in the saucepan, "Who's 'we', you and Kitty?"

"Me and the five other X3 who are still left. It's them mainly looking for him. I generally stay with our girl over there and Kitty-Cat's more worried about all things X5."

"Why are there so few of you?" 

"When the X5s came in the picture … we were made redundant. Permanently redundant in the good old Manticore way." The look on his face left no doubt as to what he meant by that.

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay. I guess it was Kitty who kept us alive the longest with the whole carer thing, but once … they took them … Well they had X5s to train up and X4s could run their little missions temporarily. Not that it was long before the X4 were removed too. Lydecker just didn't like the old series, preferred the ones he trained himself."

Logan nodded simply and they were silent for a while, until Logan voiced something that had been bothering him for a while, "What do you mean 'they took the kids'? You've said that several times now."

"Once all the X5 were past a certain point, they took our charges away from us. They stopped using us care for them and we never saw them again. It hit us all hard, but Kitty the worst … and her boy was the oldest at that!"

"Her boy being Zack?"

"Yes … Hell, she loved that kid. He was like a son to Kitty; even though she was so young herself … I always thought they must've programmed one heck of mother instinct into her! I'm sure they didn't mean to do it, but they must've … you know, when they took them away she … she … I remember … I was there at the time …"

_The X5 nursery had suddenly gone very quiet._

_"Say again, your orders, sir?" one of the older females, Abby, asked incredulously._

"You are to surrender control of the X5 unit immediately to these soldiers." Lydecker indicated the unit of ordinary soldiers behind him, "Your services as carers are no longer required. Hand over the X5s … Now!"

_The assembled X3s, the carers, looked hesitantly from one to the other. Then slowly, when Lydecker looked like he was about to yell again, one of the females, quite wide-eyed little Honey, stepped forward. Her feet dragged against the floor. She was moving painfully slow, but her charge was in her arms. Her siblings shivered at the sight. They knew how much she loved her charge, Jack._

_"Faster!" Lydecker barked._

_Honey flinched at the sound, like a beaten dog afraid of being hit again, but her feet automatically speed up. She didn't let Lydecker see how close she was too crying either. She couldn't._

_A soldier snatched the child away from her._

_"What's going to happen to him!" she cried, hugging her waist were the warmth of the infant had been a moment before._

_"None of your concern. Get back in line." Lydecker didn't even bother to raise his voice._

_One by one, with painful hesitation, the others followed her example. Abandoning their charges to an unknown fate. Betraying them … and they knew it._

_Another female carer came forward. X3-857, Georgie. Her X5 charged cradled in her arms, X5-493, Ben, now age 4._

_"No!" a shriek suddenly spilt the silence._

_Something bounded forwards, knocking Georgie to the floor, snatching the child from her arms as she fell. The others gasped. Lydecker snarled.  Kitty._

_She stood still in the middle of the room. Glaring at the soldiers. At Lydecker. "You're not going to take them away," she whispered._

_"Put that X5 down, 327!" Lydecker bellowed._

_"You're not going to take them away." Her voice was firmer now, louder._

_"Two weeks in solitary confinement! Surrender the X5!"_

_"You're not going to take them away!"_

_"Two months in solitary! Give him to me! Now!"_

**_"You're not going to take them away!"_**_ She turned away, to put the child back in his cot perhaps._

_Lydecker seized a gun and fired. She jumped, avoiding the shot. Her feet hit the floor and Kitty blurred out of Lydecker's sight. She reappeared in front of Zack's cot. One arm cradling Ben against her bosom. Unharmed._

_There was silence. Broken only by Zack's insistent "Kitty! Kitty!" as he tugged the back of her combats, trying to get her attention. She lent down and scooped the six year old up in her other arm - and all hell broke lose._

_Lydecker fired again, ordering his soldiers to follow suit. She leapt from the cot to the window, dodging bullets. Several of the ordinary soldiers bounded forward. She kicked through the window, turning to avoid spraying the children with glass. One of the soldier dived at her. She leapt into the air, but the ordinary soldier got lucky. His hand closed on her boot. She fell to the ground, turning onto her back to brake the X5s fall …  and then she felt the sharp pain in her thigh. Lydecker's last shot had hit her._

_It was just a tranq. They couldn't use bullets around the X5s. She knew that - but she also knew she had lost. She couldn't fight now. She couldn't escape. Had that been what she had been planning to do? What a stupid idea! Escape was impossible._

_Pushing the dizziness away for just a few more seconds. She raised herself upwards to look at the children in her arms. Their little faces were turned upwards. "R-remember I … I love you." She had only learned the meaning of that word a few weeks ago, from an abandoned dictionary in the classroom, but she had felt the emotion for six years._

_Zack turned his tear-filled child's eyes up at the closest thing he had ever had to a mother. His little hand stoked her cheek, wiping away the tears that he had never seen on her face before. "Love you," he repeated._

_"T-take care of … your br … brothers and sisters for me …" and then she felt Lydecker lift him away from her, she heard him cry as darkness finally consumed her._

"What did she do?" Logan asked.

Nick snapped out of his reverie, "What? Sorry, I was miles away."

"What did Kitty do when they 'took the kids'? You didn't actually tell me."

The transgenic sighed, "She - she lost, lost the fight."

"Oh … well … this is ready." Logan said, indicating the meal.

"I'll go and get Kitty." Nick said tonelessly, leaving.

Logan watched the transgenic's retreating back. He still hadn't decided whether he would help them.


	4. Chapter 4 Logan 'The Mission'

Chapter 4 

Logan brought the casserole out from the kitchen. The two X3s looked up at the sent of food, from where they had been standing by the window. Logan set the dish down on the table and began to lay out plates knifes and forks. Nick grabbed Kitty's elbow and pulled, rather than lead, her across the room to sit down.

"You know," Logan said, "I have a bottle of pre-pulse wine somewhere that would go really well with this." He wheeled across to a cupboard, and started glancing at the labels of bottles.

Kitty glanced up hesitantly, "Actually, I … I don't drink."

Logan looked up slightly, his eyebrows raised.

"Don't ask," Nick shrugged, "Alcohol does something to her metabolism. Gives her stomach cramps. I'll have some with you though, if your gonna open that bottle. Shame to let it go to waste."

"It's probably better that way. At least you don't have worry about her coming home tipsy," Logan smiled, "So a bottle of 1960s red wine for us and what can I get the lady?"

Nick smiled knowingly, "Oh - a cup of tea, English breakfast or similar. Don't ask. Doesn't like coffee either."

"Or milk or water or whatever you've got," Kitty added quickly, flushing with embarrassment.

Logan filled the kettle up with water. "So, what happens next in this story you're telling me?" he called across from the kitchen.

Kitty smiled, she was back in her element. All business, no social. "For most of the kids we did the first couple of years of training ourselves, but once all of them got past a certain age they took them away from us for further training."

Logan frowned. Max still had been very young at the time of the escape, but she remembered Manticore quite well and yet she hadn't ever mentioned Kitty or any other X3, even though she must have seen them if they were training Zack, not to mention other siblings, around her, "How old's a certain age?"

"As soon as they could all walk well unsupported. Obviously, just being able to toddle around a bit wasn't quite good enough for them. Too slow and unstable, no good for drills or exercises."

"Oh right," Logan mumbled.

So that would be what? Three? Four? Damn, that was young! He knew the X5s had been trained from a very young age, but he'd just never realised exactly what that meant. Damn that was young!

"We put up a fight when they took them," she shivered and Nick put a comforting hand on her shoulder. Logan guessed that there was a story behind that too, but they didn't seem to want to talk about it and he didn't need to know, so he didn't ask them questions about it, "But they won in the end. The battle at least. We couldn't even go near them after they became sufficiently estranged from us. Ben had them all convinced we were 'Nomalies. Bless him." 

"'Nomalies?" Logan asked confused. This wasn't something Max had spoken to him about.

"For Ben, those we're the imploded X2s mainly. They scared them, I suppose. But somehow X5s tend to paint all the old series with a very broad brush, so we're all 'Nomalies to them. Even those of us who are sane and look human. I guess that's Lydecker's influence for you."

Logan nodded, that explained why Max had never mentioned the carer X3s. He rejoined his guests at the table, bringing a steaming cup of tea for Kitty with him. Nick was slumped silently against the window, a glazed look on his face, listening to his sister tell a tale he already knew; but Kitty … suddenly there was a light in her eyes, fire in her voice, passion in her features, a smile on her lips. Logan was amazed at the transformation.

"Naturally though we didn't let that stop us from trying to look after them. While they were at Manticore there wasn't much we could do, but as soon as they escaped it was different story."

"Not all the X5s escaped in '09," Logan frowned.

"No, but nearly all of our charges were escapees. The charge program was a limited experiment. It had to be, there were only ever nineteen X3s to start with – a tiny amount compared to the number of X5s – and not all nineteen became carers, so there weren't actually that many charges either, but those who were where generally better soldiers than their fellows.

"The program gave them something of a head start, you see, because it had gotten them used to the environment so much younger. Our training had been continued as normal despite their presence, so they had already experienced shouting officers, drills, training, the war games in the forest. All with someone there to protect them and make them feel secure. So they were generally hardier, far less easy to scare and had a working knowledge of tactics and training etc. When they took Zack from me, for example, he already knew how to behave in a gunfight and he could fire a gun himself."

"My God!" Logan breathed speechless.

Kitty smiled sympathetically, "Sounds awful now, I know, but back then … Heck, he got sent out for training in the woods with me, with live bullets flying about the place, if I hadn't have taught him something he would have been killed a millions times over. Staying low just isn't always good enough, though he knew stealth tactics too of course. He was damn good at it actually."

Logan shook his head. Amazing. Being loved and raised by someone in Manticore ended up meaning you became a soldier even younger than you would have done before.

He couldn't guess the parts Kitty had omitted. The fact that teaching him how to use a gun had been an order form Lydecker and one that Kitty had been reluctant to carry out; the fact that while leaving him in the barracks out of harms way had been an option, it would almost certainly have meant returning to find that Manticore's _scientists_ had let loose on him, breaking bones and running experiments until he was in a far worse state than if she simply had taken him with her; the fact that that was the fate of all the X5s without carers.

If Kitty hadn't cared for Zack, he may have been spared the disciplines of a solider for a while longer, but he would have been forced to make up the time as an infant lab-rat instead.

Then there was also the fact that, while X3 training continued as normal most of the time, because of the difficulties of creating an X5 and the increased risk of harm coming to the baby by an inexperienced carer in a stressful situation, the entire unit was put on 'Adjustment Time' after the birth of an X5 to allow the new carer to become confident with the baby.

Training during these periods was reduced to mere morning drill and fitness training, with weekly one-on-one combat thrown in for good measure. Still though, but it left most of the day to be spent at leisure in the X5s nursery, where the young X5s learned other lessons, such as how to socialise and play together; to look after each other and to love each other. That was almost certainly the birthplace of the X5 'family' that those in the unit that had once had carers took for granted and none of the others ever experienced.

"So once the little ones had escaped," Kitty continued, as soon as every one had food on their plates, "We were able to help them, partially by making sure very little of the information gathered about them passed up the food-chain to Lydecker, but also by using our outside missions to …"

She paused suddenly. Something was vibrating in her pocket. She slid her hand into her frayed tracksuit bottoms and retrieved a battered looking pager.

"Damn," she said.

Nick looked up from his plate, "What is it, sugar-kitten?"

"From Raven, 911, Syl," came the reply.

"Damn!" he said.


	5. Chapter 5 Logan 'Family And Friends'

Chapter 5 

Logan was immediately all business, "How can I help?"

"Could you set up a secure telephone line for me please?" Kitty asked standing up, "I need to contact Raven as soon as possible, find out where he is, what's wrong…?" her voice trailed off eliminating the need for the etc.

"No problem," Logan rolled across the room towards his computer.

"Let me guess, Kitty-Cat," the other man sighed, remaining seated, "Nick's being told to go find transport."

"You can use my car," Logan called from across the room.

"Go pick up the rest of the equipment then," Nick sighed, eventually rising to his feet.

"Uh-huh - Now," his sister snapped, turning to join Logan at his computer.

"Naturally," Nick turned away, sighing again. When would his sister get the point? The X5s weren't babies anymore; they could take care of themselves.

Just before he reached the door, he heard Kitty's voice on the phone, "Raven? That you, honey? Thank God! What's up with…? She's been caught by the cops? Questions about her barcode? Where? We're on our way!"

Involuntarily Nick broke into a run.

*******

After a surprisingly short amount of time, the three of them climbed out of Logan's car into a dirty dumping ground that had once been to allowed call itself a car park. They were here, because this miserable, stinking pit happened to belong the grubby-looking, run-down hotel where they were supposed to meet Raven, whom, Kitty had briefed Logan, was a fellow X3 from their unit, also with an X5 interest. Whatever that meant.

"I thought you couldn't walk," Nick muttered as Logan strode up towards the main doors.

"It's an exoskeleton, Nick," Kitty interrupted, "I thought you read the report,"

Logan turned around aghast, "Report?" 

Kitty grinned at the look on his face, "We watch X5s. You spend way too much time with Max for us not to have a file on you,"

"Kinda risky keeping files, don't you think?" Logan asked still frowning.

"Oh!" Kitty giggled, "We've got pretty good at hiding things from Manticore. And White's not that much harder really." Logan didn't get the joke, but it was weird watching the female X3 laugh. She kept such a straight face most of the time that somehow anything more than the wisp of a sarcastic smile looked strangely out of place.

It suited her though, Logan had to admit that. The normally plain woman looked almost beautiful. He watched fascinated for the three seconds it took for her laughter to die down to a mere cheeky grin. She reminded him of someone, he suddenly realised, but he couldn't place who it was.

"What else do you know about me?" he asked slowly.

Kitty shrugged, "Huh, just the usual blurb. Address, date of birth, blah blah blah, obviously; that you come from a rich family and that you blew away most of your fortune; oh and that your Eyes Only, of course."

"How do you …"

"Know that?" Nick finished, "I IDed you." He said that as if it was supposed to mean something.

"You didn't cover up your iris and retina well enough, surprisingly," Kitty explained, but she couldn't keep the sarcasm out of her voice, "Eyes Only indeed. Very safe that one! May as well have called yourself Fingerprints Only, or DNA Only, or 'Hi my name is Logan Cale' Only for all the good that is at keeping you anonymous. Nick took one look at your baby-blue eyes and matched you up with a transmission from that same day. It was that easy."

Logan shook his head in amazement. He had long since given up holding grudges against the transgenic ability to take one look at him and see Eyes Only. Nick was not the first to do so and probably wouldn't be the last either. Kitty was right, he probably shouldn't have chosen to expose a body part that made him so easy to identify.

"So how about we go inside and met this 'brother' of yours?" he said in an effort to change the subject.

Kitty smiled again, in a strangely pleasant way this time, "We were supposed to meet him _in front _of the hotel, not inside it. Besides we don't have to go anywhere. He's already here."

She cocked her head slightly and Logan followed her gaze to a man in his mid-thirties, who was perched several meters away on a heavily vandalised car that looked like it had been left there before the pulse. 

The stranger didn't have Nick's muscle-packed body nor was he as skinny as Kitty, owning instead a figure that was to be placed somewhere in the middle of their two extremes; lean, but none the less still fairly muscular. His skin was a dark tan in colour and his sleek coal-black hair shone in the sunlight.

He jumped from the car and, as he strolled towards them, Logan was surprised to find that Raven didn't have his siblings' height. He couldn't have been much over a mere five feet.

Raven made up for his lack of height with his style, however. He moved with the graceful prowl of a hunting cat, with the attitude of a movie star. He was dressed like one too. The man looked like something out of that pre-pulse classic, the Matrix. Black leather for the most part, with dark glasses hiding his face from view. He made his two old tracksuit clad siblings look decidedly boring.

The figure stopped by the crumbled remains of a wall, that had once divided the car park from a flowerbed that now held nothing more than weeds, and bent down to shake something hidden behind it – some_one_ hidden behind it, rather.

Logan heard Kitty's sharp intake of breath, "Tobias? Didn't know he was coming." Sure enough another man rose up from behind the wall.

If Raven looked like something out of the Matrix, then Tobias featured Lord of the Rings. He looked every bit the elf, save for the pointy ears and the fact that his hair was more like the written version of Harry Potter's, jet-black and untameable. He was incredibly pale. Pale skin, pale blue eyes, and even pale clothes - a scruffy high-necked white jumper with heavily faded jeans – but he had such an air of grace and accuracy about him that it wouldn't surprise Logan to see him pick up a bow and slide down a flight of stairs on an upturned shield.

The two men stood still by the wall, watching their two siblings. They got the message at once and speed off towards them, leaving Logan to follow in his own time.

"Hey," Kitty kissed her brothers' cheeks awkwardly; as Nick high-fived first Raven's leather-gloved hand and then Tobias' slender white one. "Great to see you guys!" he cried.

"So what's up with Syl?" Kitty asked, pulling away, as her face reset itself back to business mode.

Tobias frowned. "Not good," he replied, "She's being detained in a facility not two klicks from here. I don't think they've caught on to the fact that she's genetically enhanced solider yet, but her barcode's on file."

"So it shouldn't be too long before White swoops in on the building then," Kitty rounded off.

Raven nodded, "Exactly!"

"So what do we do?" Nick put in.

Tobias scratched his head, "Without letting her know we're here? Not much we can do."

"Speaking of people not knowing we're here, who's the guy you've got with you?" Raven asked as Logan caught up with them.

Kitty glanced to her side, "Oh hi. Boys, this is Logan. Logan, these my brothers, also X3s. Geoffrey Alistair and Tobias Eugene."

Raven sighed exasperatedly, "Otherwise known as Raven and Tobias. Honestly Kitty! You must be the last person who even remembers what our full names were, let alone uses them!"

Tobias however had noticed something else, "Logan as in Eyes Only?"

Logan nodded warily. Not another one.

"Eyes Only?" Reaven asked.

"Don't any of you read the reports?" Kitty muttered exasperatedly.

'Or it could just be that they keep each other well informed,' Logan thought miserably.

"So what's he doing here?" Raven shot back at her.

"Objecting to your rudeness possibly," Kitty snapped, "Don't talk over people as if they weren't even here,"

"Yes mother," Raven replied. Kitty raised her eyebrows.

"We were talking to Logan about Zack when Kitty's pager rang," Nick said quickly, "So Logan _kindly_ agreed to lend us a hand saving Syl."

"Yeah," the unfortunate ordinary man agreed, purely to make his presence felt amongst the seething transgenics, "So – um – what are we going to do then?"

"I thought something like the stunt we pulled of in 2014," Kitty smiled again suddenly,

"You spent eight months in psy-ops for that, Kitty, and that's not counting what else that bitch did to you for that little trick! I'd hardly call it a successful manoeuvre!" Tobias exclaimed.

She shrugged. "So we modify it slightly," she explained, "That's all."


	6. Chapter 6 Logan 'X3 Action'

**Author's Note:** So … her evilness has finally updated. My sincerest apologies for the length of time it took, but I was busy. Between exams and then Syrai, my little slave driver, making me write other stuff, I struggled to find the time, but at least it's a long chapter a bit too long really … Lots of breaks though, you'll be pleased to know.

Chapter 6 

The light bulb flickered and then went out completely. Syl looked up in irritation. That was all she needed right now. She didn't like the dark. It gave her the creeps. It wasn't, of course, that she couldn't see in it – Manticore had taken care of that – but she just didn't like the way everything changed it's colour and definition once the lights went out. It was all too dull and weird for her liking.

Besides, the brownout would annoy the guards. _That_ was the last the last thing she needed right now. What she needed to do was stay calm and focused and think as a solider and get herself outta here. She did not need to concede points – however small – to the enemy … but then again, the enemy couldn't see in the dark, so maybe she was the one with the advantage after all.

She glanced around her cell, checking it for the six billionth time. There had to be some kind of advantage she could use here to help her complete her current mission – i.e. escape.

The walls were of old concrete - dusty, but thick and still more than solid enough to hold her despite her transgenic abilities. The ceiling was the same. The window was heavily bared with solid iron, a little moonlight shone through into the room, but it was difficult even for Syl to see much of the view behind them. Not that she minded, she had never cared much for city landscapes anyway.

The transgenic inspected the bars of the window more closely. They were a little rusty, but still too strong for her to break without some kind of tool. No luck there then. The bars at the front of her cell were even worse, if anything. Those didn't even show signs of rust.

Finally she came back to her old _friend_ – the door. Syl sighed. She had been over its stainless steel frame a thousand times already. Whoever designed it deserved a medal. The damn door was completely transgenic proof. Not even a gust of air could get through there without a power drill.

 She sighed again. Okay, she finally admitted, maybe she had made a mistake avoiding capture quite as hard as she had. Possibly if she hadn't put that one officer into a coma … and given those other two a serious concussion … and broken limbs on those other four, she would be out there stealing a new motorbike and heading off to a different city by now, rather than stuck here in a maximum security cell staring at a damn airtight door. She hit her fist against it in frustration - it swung wide open.

_Ah yeah_ – electromagnetic lock. No electricity – no lock. Figures.

Still, Syl paused – why _no_ electricity? Surely there had to be some form of backup generator or something to prevent this very situation from ever occurring. Otherwise every convict in the centre would have a free ticket out of here during every brownout. What kinda idiots do they be employ in the Washington Prison Service?

Syl paused for a second. Okay, so there wasn't a backup. What was next on her list of things to worry about?

Deciding that she had better get moving if she ever wanted to get out of here, Syl hid herself in the doorframe of her cell. Carefully, she glanced along the corridor outside. It was clear. With prefect technique, she slipped across to the end of the row of cells. Clear. She spun round the corner and paused listening at the door leading into the main hall. _Damn._ Voices. She pulled away from the door and started to retrace her steps.

Suddenly she froze again. Footsteps in front of her. _Damn! _She was trapped!

*****************************

_"Yes,"_ Kitty cried as the screen in front of her went blank. Almost simultaneously the lights went out around them.

"Finally," Nick sighed as he and Raven rose from their seats by the door, "We've only been here for like two hours…"

"It was a hard system to crack," Logan retorted, rising from his seat, "Passwords and firewalls all over the place. Still – it might have gone down faster if you had been _helping_, rather than just sitting on your Asses, twiddling your thumbs."

"I _was_ helping," Nick replied, "Just ask all the unconscious guards out there." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder to illustrate, but Logan's ordinary eyesight couldn't pick out the gesture in the dark.

"Quite a couple of them seemed to have this strange desire to come near this room," Raven chuckled, switching on a torch, "But they've all taken an unplanned vacation to dreamland right now."

 "Yeah," Tobias laughed, pulling away from his own blank monitor, "Besides … mixing Nick and Raven with computers isn't helping - it's guaranteeing failure. I don't think they can even tell the Keyboard from the CPU."

Raven frowned. He was aware the statement wasn't intended seriously, but still ... he had his pride. "Keyboard's the thing with all the letters on it right? So the CPU would be what? The thing that you push around to move the pointy arrow thing?"

Kitty rolled her eyes.

"Nah, that's the mouse I think," Nick muttered, "How about the thing that puts words and stuff on all the bits of paper?"

"How about you two stick to what your good at?" Tobias replied, "Kicking ass!"

They were in the main control room of Washington Macointer Correction Centre, where Syl was being held. The time was now somewhere around three o'clock in the morning, since Kitty, Logan and Tobias had spent the last two hours trying to install a virus into the central computer system. The idea was to get the whole thing to crash, thereby switching off the water, the battery-operated security cameras and, most importantly of all, the electricity, which took care of most of the rest of the security in the building.

Still … two whole hours in a main room in a red-controlled building was however, as Kitty pointed out, a tactical problem.

The guards were monitored from this room, and so their controllers were slumped in a heap by the door, but – while that was great from the point of view of suddenly silent guards going unnoticed – the still conscious ones would get suspicious about the long radio silence from control sooner or later and then their behaviour would become harder to predict … seeing as there were probably no procedures in place for what to do if Control was taken out by a small handful of men and an unarmed woman.

The one thing they couldn't do, however, was call for backup and go to a full intruder alert, since both those actions required somebody sitting in the control room to relay the messages and alert the other guards.

As none of the X3s or Logan felt much inclined to do that, they would be facing the actions of a few stray individuals, rather than a full fighting guard force. A major improvement – Logan half-wondered why the idea had never occurred to Max. It would have saved her being chased out of buildings with a squadron of guards hot on her tail about a hundred times over.

Raven tapped him on the shoulder lightly and Logan rose quietly to his feet.

"Everyone know their position?" Kitty asked quietly, tugging at the hem of her scruffy black jumper to straighten it, "Then lets move out!"

They disappeared though the door as a unit, but the second they were in the corridor they split up. Logan and Raven steered to the left and down a flight of stairs – Kitty, Nick and Tobias headed off to the right towards the cellblocks and Syl.

Almost as soon as the light from Raven's torch had completely disappeared, Nick reached into his trouser pocket pulling out a torch, "You guys need more light?"

 "Best not risk it," Kitty said quickly.

"I'm fine – just don't go asking me to see more than three feet in front of me," Tobias laughed.

Nick gave him an appreciative grin, which he struggled to make out, but when he turned back to his sister Nick's eyes were full of concern again, "You sure, Kitty-Cat? Your eyesight was damaged way worse than Tobias's."

"I'm sure,"

"You know there's no harm in just admitting you need help here, Kitsey!"

_"I'm sure,"_ Kitty snapped, "I'll just stay close to you guys. I'll be fine."

"Fine!" Nick growled back, "But you're takin' my hand then." Kitty visibly shrank back against the wall.

"He has a point there I'm afraid, Kittens," Tobias added, "If you fall behind and can't find us again … can't have you stumbling around, bumping into things…"

"Then I'll use my nose … or just feel for you …"

_"Kit!"_

Reluctantly Kitty placed the very tips of her fingers, nothing more, in Nick's outstretched hand. He curled his fingers up around them, pressing his thumb down to force them to stay there.

"Good girl," he whispered, stuffing the torch back in his pocket, "Now come on,"

*****************************

Raven wordlessly guided Logan back outside towards his car. It was parked outside the perimeter of the building, a little way down the street by some posh-looking housing, so that if anybody saw it they would simply think that somebody there had visitors.

That was great, but it left one major problem … getting there!

Raven paused, almost sniffing the air, as they crept through a door into the prison yard. He lifted his glasses up onto his head. His sharp eyes scanned the area once, twice and then he nodded.

"You packing?" he muttered.

"Huh?"

"Got a gun?" Raven repeated, his eyes still fixed rigidly on the yard in front of them.

"Yeah…"

"Good! They don't appear to spare guards in this place. There are two guards by the gate. Another pair by the entrance to the building over there," he indicated one the opposite side of the yard, "Two by the main entrance two our left and … and a final one patrolling. She's the closest and closing in, but I don't think she's seen us yet though."

"You can tell all that?" Logan whispered surprised. The gate alone was a good fifty meters away. Even Max struggled to see across that kind of a distance clearly.

Raven smiled, without looking at him, "I have the sharpest eyesight of my unit – and besides, wind's in the right direction – and she's having … women's trouble. Makes it easy."

"Wind's in the right direction?" a shocked Logan whispered, "You use your…?"

"Sandeman had the foresight to arm X3 with an excellent sense of smell," Raven agreed, "They dropped that for X5. Dunno why. I think it just made Lydecker nervous. Tinga and Ben could always smell what was for dinner a mile off though."

There was something about his voice as Raven said this, but before Logan could place what it was, the other man grabbed his arm and dragged him further along the wall.

"Escape and Evade. Let's try and avoid a fight if it's at all possible," he explained, "She was answering her mobile just then. Gave us a chance to move."

"I'm assuming you didn't _smell_ that one?" Logan grunted, rubbing his smarting arm.

"Nah," Raven grinned appreciatively, "She's a lot closer now, I saw her head go down – and I have the sharpest hearing too. D-d duh duuh, duh duh dee duh duh."

Logan smiled, "The mobile network's only been back two years and that ringtone's already made a comeback."

"Tell me about it," Raven laughed.

*****************************

Nick halted and the other two froze instantly, watching him.

"What is it?" Tobias whispered.

"The part where he gets to rub his undamaged hearing in our faces," Kitty replied.

Nick ignored her, "Group of guards up ahead,"

"Well, what are we waiting for?" Tobias grunted, "Let's take them out!" The two males started to advance forwards again.

"Wait!" Kitty hissed urgently, "Don't you smell that?"

It took a moment before they realised what she was on about.

"_Belle Rouge_," Nick whispered, "What the hell has that got do with anything?"

"It's Syl's perfume," Kitty shot back, "She must be close!"

"How the hell does she know these things?" Tobias muttered incredulously.

"Don't ask me," Nick shrugged.

*****************************

"So why did you ask about that gun earlier?" Logan muttered, shifting his position slightly.

"Huh – oh – because should it come to a fight, I just wanted to know whether I had backup from you or not. I mean I'm assuming you have no martial arts training."

"I nearly took up boxing as a kid," Logan laughed, "But it clashed with a chess championship …"

Raven smiled, "Doubt any of the guards here will stop for a match."

"Well, I'll just sit here and throw the pieces at them then."

"Bullets tend to work better,"

"Only if you fire them,"

Raven shook his head, grinning, "You sound just like my sister!"

"Kitty?"

"Who else?"

"Is that a compliment?"

"Watch it!" Raven growled, still grinning.

"So," Logan was suddenly serious again, "You think it's gonna come to a fight then?"

"Depends,"

"On what?"

"On whether you can jump this wall," Raven replied, patting the fifty-foot monstrosity behind them.

*****************************

Syl shrank back against the wall. What should she do now?  Her eyes scanned the corridor for escape routes – there were none.

She bit her lip and then leapt into the air. Her arms and legs shot out and she jammed herself against the ceiling. The oldest X5 trick in the book – but still effective though.

Heart throbbing in her chest, she waited. Seconds ticked by. She shifted her position nervously, still listening to the footsteps ahead. 'Come on. Come on,' she mouthed. Her arms were beginning to feel the strain. She had never been quite as strong as her siblings. Seconds turned into minutes. She bit back a groan. Hurry up!

Finally she saw the first one turn the corner. A guy in is late fifties, with a belly big enough for her to use as a trampoline. She'd need to, if he didn't start moving his fat ass a little faster. Another one stumbled into view. Some spotty kid in his early twenties. She squirmed against the ceiling disgustedly at sight. A third guard joined his buddies. Middle-aged coloured guy with dreadlocks. An Asian male bearing a torch brought up the rear. They huddled together at the end of the shadowy corridor, near the soothing light of the torch, talking in whispered tones.

Syl's muscles were definitely feeling sore now. She wanted to scream in frustration. Was there some kind of party going on over there? Why couldn't they just quit the jabbering and pass through already?

Finally the fat one broke away from the pack and his way towards the door behind her. The kid followed him immediately. Syl pushed her body flat against the ceiling as his lanky frame passed beneath her. Subconsciously avoiding any contact between her blonde curls and his greasy mat. She could practically see the nits crawling over his scull. It wasn't pretty.

Then suddenly dreadlocks called them back. Apparently there was something amiss in a cell back there. Syl's limbs were ablaze. She couldn't stop the cry of frustration.

Fortunately for her just at that moment a female voice rang though the darkness, _"We have a problem! I need backup here people!"_

All four guards shot out of the room. Syl dropt to the floor in relief.

There was a startled gasp behind her. Okay, so maybe the Asian had remained behind. Her fist took care of that.

*****************************

"You aren't serious?" Logan gasped staring at the wicked razor wire topped heights above them.

"Deadly," Raven replied still keeping his eyes fixed on the yard.

"Dead is what I'm going to be if I fall from that height."

Raven smiled, "Relax. You see that bin over there?" Logan nodded, glancing at the large metal bin the transgenic indicated. It was nearly Logan's standing height and it's large round top was attached to it so that it could be swung up or down at the user's leisure. Overflowing black bin liners were scattered around it and for some reason a rather limp-looking tree stood shielding it from the view of the yard.

"Well the plan is – you climb onto that. I clamber up the tree and haul you over. If I remember correctly there's a garden on the other side, so I should be able to chuck you into some bushes or something to break your fall."

Logan stared at the transgenic as if he'd gone crazy, which wasn't a bad bet considering how far-fetched the idea sounded.

Raven shrugged, "_Or_ we can take our chances with Madame and her cronies with their semi-automatic rifles, and should we happen to make it across the yard without being gunned down, which I severely doubt, we will almost certainly alert Syl to our presence here and get an awful lot of awkward questions asked."

Logan began to see his point.

"Okay then," he shrugged, "At least I don't have to worry about breaking my back anymore…"

"Huh?" Raven gave him an odd glance out of the corner of his eye.

"I had some guy shoot up my spinal cord two years ago. I've been paralysed from the waist down ever since."

Raven snorted heavily, "And you're walking _because_?" 

"I wear an exoskeleton."

Raven whistled between his teeth, "You're serious?"

"Deadly," Logan replied.

The transgenic shook his dark brown locks thoughtfully. His eyes however never left the yard. "You know, any other loser would have thought you were making this up!"

"And you don't?"

"Saw them in action in Manticore. Pretty sophisticated technology. You were bloody lucky to get one."

"Tell me about it," Logan laughed.

*****************************

"How many do we make that?" Kitty asked her twin, struggling to count the unconscious guards strewn around her in the dark.

"Three from further up this corridor. Four from behind that door." Nick replied instantly.

"Seven," Kitty breathed, "This is not good. They are beginning to clump together. If they keep this up there is going to be trouble soon."

"How d' you mean," Nick asked tersely, biting his lip.

"As many large groups they are more dangerous – even without the ability to communicate with each other," Kitty explained.

"Plan's always worked before," her brother replied tensely. As it happened taking out communications systems first had been a strategy Kitty had developed when they were younger and Nick had always been highly defensive of anything connected with his twin sister. The idea that something of hers, so well tried and tested, now appeared to be failing distressed him more than he cared to admit.

"Not ideal conditions," Kitty sighed, she hated letting her brothers down just as much, "There are just too many guards. The strategy is designed to work with lower numbers of opponents spread over the whole of an area.  Not what practically amounts to a private army almost living in each other's laps."

"That's what I don't get," Tobias butted in, "The sheer number of guards. With a facility this size you'd expect maybe thirty tops, but with what I've seen so far … Heck, I would be surprised if it was close to a hundred! It's absolutely fucking ridiculous!"

From what he could make out of the look on Kitty's face she seemed to be thinking along the same lines. "Just doesn't make sense for a prison," she agreed, "I'm beginning to wonder if it isn't something more …"

"Another Manticore outpost?" Nick asked bewildered.

Kitty laughed, "Nick! This place is more heavily guarded than Manticore _itself_ ever was!" There was silence.

"Think we're gonna need more recon," Tobias finally stated.

"Think you're right," Kitty agreed.

"Hang on a minute," Nick burst in, "You guys spent two hours in their main computer system – and you didn't notice _anything?_"

"That's just it," Kitty sighed, "On disk, paper – even in it's structure and security this place just looks like your average top-security prison."

"Except that there are no prisoners," Tobias added, indicating the empty cells around them.

"You noticed that too, huh?" Kitty smiled warily.

"Except Syl," Nick put in.

It was as if a light bulb had just clicked on in their minds. Tobias and Kitty glanced at other, stunned, both knowing exactly what the other one was thinking.

Kitty recovered herself first, "Speaking of Syl, shouldn't we be concentrating on getting her out of here? I'm assuming you guys did notice when she headed off down the other end of this corridor?"

"About five minutes ago," Nick had learned from experience what happened to people who missed vital information on a mission with Kitty. Especially if that mission involved X5s.

"Good," Kitty smiled, "I saw a map of this facility in the Control Room. We can overtake her and ensure she leaves through the right door. There's a spot towards the back I'm pretty sure will be unguarded, even in this place."

"What did you do?" Nick muttered incredulously, "Memorise the map?"

Kitty raised her eyebrows, "Do I look like Lynx? I just took a look at possible escape routes."

"Yeah right," Nick murmured. He darted ahead of them, checking the corridor, and thereby leaving Kitty to be minded by his less well-sighted brother. Not that she needed minding.

Tobias, however, used the opportunity to hiss in Kitty's ear, "You think that …"

Kitty cut him off. "I want to have this conversation with Lynx and Leo first."

"Alright," Tobias pulled back without protest. His sister was the better tactician and besides, she out-ranked him.

*****************************

Raven clicked his tongue suddenly, tensing his body for action. The guard he'd been watching patrol the yard had finally moved away.

"Time to move out," he snapped to Logan, grabbing the other man's arm, "Let's go." He pulled him swiftly across to the bin.

"Get up. Hurry." Raven asked, folding his hands to give Logan a leg-up. Logan scrambled onto the bin, aided by the transgenic. It seemed to take forever before he was stable enough for Raven to be able to let go of him.

With the ordinary safe, the other man darted up between the wall and the tree. One foot pressing against the mossy bricks. The other pushing against the soft bark. It wasn't easy work, even with his transgenic abilities, but finally he was high enough to peer between the metal barbs. As suspected it was a garden. Plenty of bushes and … oh …

"There's a pond, which would make a soft landing. That okay?" he gasped.

Logan nodded.

"You can swim? Exo's waterproof?"

"Yes," Logan paused at the second question, "I think so, yeah …"

"Okay then," Raven reached down and gripped Logan's shirt with his fists. In one swift movement the ordinary was flying across the wire. Raven paused to check that none of the guards had noticed anything.

All clear. He bent his knees and somersaulted gracefully across himself.

He landed knee deep in the mud surrounding the pond. Before he could stop himself, he caught sight of his refection. His glasses had fallen off. His eyes were uncovered. His eyes … her eyes …

_Big large brown eyes.__ They were staring at him. The teenage solider was standing in a circle with siblings, watching his commanding officer introduce the latest X5 charge. Just like he had brought all the other newborn X5s destined for this unit into the nursery._

_Only this one wasn't just like any other X5. If you thought about it she wasn't really an X5 at all … she was a baby X3. As was evidenced by those big brown eyes staring up at him. His eyes …in that tiny face._

_"So," Lydecker finished, "Volunteers to be her carer?"_

_Raven swallowed. Did he dare?_

_Lydecker's eyes had been fixed mainly on the female X3s when he called for Volunteers. It was mainly them who had charges. Taro had one too, but then, there had always been something a little off about Taro._

_Then suddenly he caught sight of Kitty from the other side of the circle. 'Do it,' she mouthed at him from behind Lydecker's back._

_Raven swallowed. She made it sound like a challenge. Alright then, like he was going to let his baby sister think him a coward, and besides, he took another look at those big brown eyes and knew he'd regret it for the rest of his life if he didn't._

_The young solider stepped forward, "I'll be her carer, sir,"_

Raven balled his fists and dug them into his stomach, screwing his eyes shut. Think of the pain. Think of anything – but don't think of her … not his poor little girl.

He bit his lip, drawing blood. Blindly he groped for the glasses. Finally he felt his fingers close upon the hard plastic. He slammed them back over his nose.

Slowly his eyes opened again, safely hidden from sight behind the opaque lenses. He felt water roll over his lids as the pressure was released. "I'm sorry, honey," he whispered, "I'm so sorry,"

But his mind didn't give him peace.

_His little girl.__ The solider lay in his bed holding the tiny baby in his arms that first night, rather than surrendering her to her to her own cot on the other side of the nursery. His little baby. Their little baby._

_He gazed at her tiny sleeping face. She was so like her mother. She had her nose. Her chin. She was beautiful. They were both beautiful. Tears ran unbitten down the young transgenic's face._

_She was gone …Tiger was gone …**Tiger**_

Even now just the name, voiced only in his memory, still ripped him apart. The name conjured images of the smile. The smile tasted of the laugh. The laugh …

_They were out. Playing war-games in the forest. This was nothing new in itself. It happened regularly. When the weather was good they were out two or three times a week. _

_But today was different … _

_They could both feel it. The fire between them. It had been there for so long now. The way they noticed everything the other did …_

_Leo hissed an order at him and Raven saw baby Kitty catch Tiger's arm trying to refocus her sister on the mission. The training, right …_

_He forced himself to concentrate upon his older brother's orders. He and Tobias had to …_

_It didn't take long for Raven to become separated from the others. He didn't mean to …he just did. He couldn't concentrate. He had to snap out of this. He was a solider. He should be infallible._

_And then he heard it._

_It was the sweetest music he had ever heard. It was like gentle ringing bells in the warm summer air. Like delicious golden honey on newly baked bread. It was …it was …Tiger._

_What was he supposed to be doing again?_

_He turned and caught sight of her beautiful tanned face. His breath caught in his throat. She laughed again. Raven thought he would die. He felt so light and dizzy._

_And then before they knew what was happing, she was in his arms. Their lips touched … and then Raven _knew_ he would die._

_His hands caressed her delicate soft skin. Her gentle fingers ruffled his hair. The kiss deepened and he felt her sigh, rather than heard it, as they slowly collapsed onto the ground … together._

Raven dug his fingers into his palms. "I'm so sorry, darling," he whispered, "So sorry …"

**_"NO!"_**_ Raven screamed at the twelve year old, "It **not** true! Your lying Kitty!"_

_His little sister simply shook her head. She wasn't able deal with this yet herself, but she had to tell him. She couldn't not._

_Her brother gripped her shoulders, shaking her, "Please Kitty! Tell me it's not true! Please!"_

_The little girl just hung limp in his arms, letting him manhandle her. There was nothing she could do. _

_Tears ran down her brother's face. "No. No. No. It's not true. Please. She can't be …" his voice was quieter now._

_But Kitty had one last bombshell to impart before she could leave him in peace. "You have a little girl," she said._

_He stared at her, unable to comprehend the words, "What?"_

_"Tiger died … Tiger died in ch…" Kitty pulled herself together, she couldn't just dump this on her brother like this, "Bringing your little girl into the world."_

_"What?" Raven muttered again, but she knew he didn't need a repetition. He had heard her._

_"She was really excited about it, I think," the younger girl explained quietly, "But towards the end … she just wasn't strong enough anymore …"_

_"She's the strongest I know," Raven snapped, furious at the child for insulting his beloved._

_Kitty just shook her head. "It's _hard_. For nine months. That's a long time."_

_"She not gone, Kitty," Raven repeated with conviction, "She can't be …"_

Raven didn't even realise he was shaking with heavy sobs for several minutes. He had lost them … he had lost them both … Tiger and their daughter … Tinga …

Slowly the tears subsided. Raven looked up. Wiping the wetness from underneath his glasses. Tiger wouldn't want him crying for her … she'd always been so strong. He bit his lip … and then suddenly the sound of mud splashing behind him shook him out of his misery.

"There you are," a soaking wet muddy Logan cried.

When they got back to the car the other three were already there. 

"You guys made it back okay then?" Raven asked tonelessly.

"Kitty excelled herself at navigation once again," Nick laughed, oblivious to his brother's listlessness, "And it's not like we haven't had tons of practice at discrete guiding for little lost X5s."

"Mind you I pity Syl her escape route, poor girl," Tobias added, "Did you have to force the poor kid through the sewers, Kit?"

"Hey! I promise the safest way out – not the nicest," Kitty shrugged as Nick, Tobias and Logan poured into car. "Hey Raven," she said more quietly, "Heard anything from Leo recently? I need to talk to him about this place…"

"Huh? No…" Raven murmured listlessly. Kitty caught his arm keeping him out of the car a second longer.

"What is it, big brother?" she asked quietly. He shrugged her off.

"Oh not _again,_ Raven," she sighed, realising what it was.

Her brother ignored her.

"It's been nearly a year since Tinga died."

Kitty tried again, "And nearly fifteen, since Tiger…"

"Some wounds don't heal that fast, kitten," her brother snapped.

Kitty suddenly grew very still. "I know," she whispered, "Believe me, I know," 

*********************************************

So, good-looking, you've finally made to the end of this chapter! As anyone told you how good you look in what you're wearing? But then – hey! You'd make a bin liner look good! And you're so clever too! Wow! I bet even Hawkings phones you up every hour of the day to ask for help with complicated equations.

So … you think you could spare two more seconds to press that little purple button and review for me huh?


	7. Chapter 7 Zack 'And so it goes on'

**Author's Note:** Yes I know – I've done this flashback twice already, but I wrote with the original and it just didn't seem to want to fit in anywhere in the rewrite, but I didn't want to leave it out. So you have my sincerest apologies if you've read it before.

Chapter 7 

Pushing her twin aside, Kitty crouched down in the dense bushes that grew beside the barn. She lent close to the ancient wood keeping as low as possible. Carefully she adjusted several branches so that she could see clearly, without being seen at the same time.

"You can see okay?" Nick asked anxiously.

"Yes Nick,"

"And what about hearing? You sure you'll be able to pick up everything okay?"

"Nicolas," Kitty hissed, "If you don't shut up right this second you'll be able to find out how much _you_ can hear – when your unconscious."

Nick winced, "Sorry – I'd just hate for you to miss this. I know how much seeing him again must mean to you…"

Kitty growled, and he shut up.

Both sets of eyes fixed upon the horizon, waiting. Kitty felt her fingers tap the dry soil beneath her. She frowned and then started chewing her lip nervously. "Come on," she murmured, "Come on."

Nick placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. She froze … and he removed it quickly. 

Then suddenly he nudged her.

"Listen," he whispered.

Several minutes later, she smiled as she heard it too.

Hooves.

The herd was coming home … and the ranchers would be coming with them.

It took awhile before Kitty's damaged eyesight could make out more than the outline of the cattle, but as soon as she could see detail, Nick saw her tense up in concentration. Her eyes desperately scanning the more human figures.

Suddenly Kitty felt the urge to giggle in happiness. _There he was._

The sun shone across his muscular figure silhouetting his torso in the soft pink fields. His blonde hair had been combed back out of his face. The jeans and vest he donned looked almost new, rather than the well-worn clothing they were used to seeing him in. Physically he was almost glowing with health and Kitty was sure she could see a smile playing around his face.

Then suddenly he roared with laughter as one of the other men told him a joke. Kitty grinned proudly. She hadn't seen him so happy since he was a small child.

"Bloodyhell!" Nick exclaimed behind her.

Kitty smiled, "He's magnificent, isn't he?"

"I assume you mean Zack?" her brother muttered.

She shot him a confused look, "Who else would I be talking about?" 

"Three o'clock," was all Nick answered.

"Bloody hell!" Kitty cried.

At the head of the herd guiding the cattle back into the barn was a huge man dressed completely in worn denim. His frame was almost as broad and powerful as Nick's, but his hair had gone almost completely white. Even so Kitty knew he wasn't any older than his late thirties.

"What the hell is he doing here?" Kitty muttered.

"He's supposed to be in Mexico isn't he?" Nick asked, keeping his voice slightly more hushed than a normal whisper.

"That's right," Kitty replied, equally quietly, "Looking after Brin."

"If he left her untended – I'm gonna kill him," Nick hissed.

"Not if I get there first!" his sister snarled, balling her fists.

Nearly all of the cattle had found their way back into the barn by this point. Kitty noticed the large denim clad man glance up for a second.

"You kids go inside and get some supper," he yelled, "I'll finish up here."

"Sure thing, Buddy," Zack called back and he and the other men left as 'Buddy' drove the cows through the last metal pen into the barn.

It was the chance Kitty and her brother had been waiting for.

As soon as the other men had vanished into the house, she stood up.

"Hello _Buddy_," she snarled. The rancher flinched. Painfully slowly, he turned towards the direction of her voice.

"Hi Kitty," he said. "Nick," he added, as her twin also emerged from the undergrowth.

"What the hell do you think you were playing at?" Nick shot at him, clearing the distance between them in seconds, "You do realise we had to call in help from a civilian to find Zack – and all the while you were right here with him!"

"Logan?" 'Buddy' asked mutely.

"Who else?" Kitty, who had finally also cleared the distance, was snarling like a wild animal, "We've almost certainly alerted Maxie to our presence now thanks to you! And I thought you were in Mexico looking after Brin."

"She ran out on me," the tall man muttered.

"With a loser like you I'm not surprised," Kitty roared, "What the hell did you think you were playing at Napoleon!"

"Napoleon?" the rancher gasped in shock.

"Nicknames would imply affection," she hissed viciously.

"Look Kitty!" 'Napoleon' began.

"Don't you 'Look Kitty' me!" she cried, _"You hid my charge from me! You tried to separate me from him again!"_

"I didn't mean too … just let me explain …"

"What the hell is there to explain Leo?" she was shaking with rage, "You left me worried sick about Zack, when all it would have taken was one simple phone call to put my mind at ease!"

"Kit!"

"And you call yourself my brother," she spat, before suddenly turning on her heel and storming off the ranch.

"Kitty …" Leo groaned, staring after his vanishing sister.

Nick watched him coldly. "You know what Leo?" he said, "You make one fucking bad CO. Maybe you should ask the kid in there to give you a few pointers," and with that he followed his sister out of sight.

******************************************

_The soldier, now twenty-seven, darted along the corridor trying to avoid the security system. She knew what she had to do. Her boy had been compromised. She had no choice._

_It took her less than five minutes to open the door to the main ops centre. Honestly, you would have thought they might actually have the sense to install security systems they hadn't taught to her to by-pass. She entered the centre without even causing a minor beep in the system._

_Normally this place was teaming with life, but at the moment, there were only three men in the centre. Something that could well be related to the fact that it was three-oh-five in the morning._

_The first one way a guard slumped on a stool taking a nap. He could wait for a second. The second was monitoring the screens, and very unwisely, he had his back to her. The third wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. She smiled._

_Half a second later, her hand connected with the back of the monitor's neck, sending him to dreamland._

_The guard awoke with a snort. He jumped from his stool, but a flying kick to his mid-riff sent that problem colliding headfirst into wall from which he didn't rise again._

_The third man looked at her stupidly, but didn't do anything. Probably had something to do with the fact that he was bound and gagged to his chair._

_Carefully she removed the gag. The man started to babble his thanks, but she held up a hand – and he fell silent._

_She pulled up chair from a nearby desk and sat down in front of him, leaning slightly forwards, her fingers folded in her lap. Perfect interrogation stance. The man went pale._

_'Poor thing,' she thought. He was pale enough as it was. His sand-coloured hair was in a mess and he looked like he could do with a shave, but he didn't look hurt. They clearly hadn't gotten properly started on him yet. Thank whatever was up there for that! She had been in time then._

_Renfro had had him brought up here for interrogation, but a sudden crash in the entire computer system had called her away for the evening. Kitty smiled. The computer system had a nasty habit of crashing, especially when they found new leads on the escaped X5s. Wonder why that was?_

_They had got it fixed though, but it had been so late that Renfro had simply gone to bed. Lazy bitch! But at least that self-serving laziness was something you could rely on with Renfro; Lydecker would have finished the interrogation before turning in, which would have made this little trip nearly impossible._

_Still … wasn't like he wasn't going to pay at all …_

_Neither of Manticore's evil rulers knew it yet, but the crash had caused the deletion of several very important files, including some on the escaped X5s. How strange! And such a damned nuisance too, as the paper files had also vanished. What a coincidence!_

_So now there was just one more lose end to tie up. This man …_

_"You something about X5?" she began._

_"N-no! Of course not!"_

_"Please!" Kitty sighed exasperated, "I've seen the file! Don't lie to me!"_

_"I swear I don't know anything!"_

_She cocked her head coyly, "Nothing?"_

_"Yes! Nothing!"_

_She lent forwards, "Really?"_

_"Really! I know nothing about any X5s or a boy named Zack or _anything!_" the man cried desperately._

_Kitty raised an eyebrow in mock-confusion, "Zack?" she repeated innocently, "Zack? I never mentioned a Zack."_

_She hadn't thought it was possible, but the man's face went even paler, "Yes, yes, you did!"_

_She shook her head firmly. "No, I didn't," her voice sounded tired all of a sudden._

_"Damn," she sighed. He raised his head. She could she the fear and confusion etched on his face._

_"Damn," she said again, "Damn. Damn it to hell!" She supported her forehead with her hands, her elbows propped on her knees._

_When she spoke again her voice sounded genuinely distressed, "I would have helped you escape, you know, I could have. But the thing is you see … you know too much. About my kids. I've never been out of here. I know nothing of the outside world. So even if you escaped I couldn't guarantee you'd be beyond their reach … if that is even possible. And if they caught you again – the chances are you'd tell them all you knew before I could even get to you."_

_"No!" he gasped, "No! No! I wouldn't! I'll shut up until you come! Hell, I'd go to __Europe__ or __South Africa__ or somewhere! Somewhere where they'd never find me in the first place! Please! I promise! I swear! Please! Please!!"_

_"Not good enough," The young woman muttered, "You couldn't withstand Manticore torture and you clearly don't know the extent of its influence or you would never have suggested __South Africa__."_

_Kitty sighed again, deeply, "I swore I'd never do this. But it's for them. For him." Then she reached out and snapped the man's neck._

_"Sorry," she whispered._

_The door crashed open! Renfro and a bunch of soldiers swarmed in. Kitty watched almost bemused as Renfro's face contorted in horror at the man's slumped body. _

_'Damnit!' Kitty thought. She'd been caught! But she knew she had had to do it … and she also knew, without a doubt, that her older brothers and sisters would consider her quest both necessary and right, this time … for the simple fact there were no orders for it … and that was well worth personally checking out the new phy-ops facility any day … _

_She turned to face Renfro with a confident smile._

**************************************************

Wow! You've got to this point in my story? Surely you wouldn't leave without pressing that little purple button huh? *big puppy-dog eyes*


	8. Secrets Not Forgotten

**_And that's the end of Miracles Lost_**

If you want more of this series … which I know is unlikely, since let's face it who would want to read more my awful writing?

However … should you be even the tiniest bit intrigued about what's happing go to to see Episode 2, **Secrets Not Forgotten.**

Wanna know more? See below ….

_Max couldn't believe her eyes, when she followed _Logan___ through the door of the bar. She hadn't seen a place so clean since … well … since last time she had been in Logan's penthouse, which was yesterday evening actually … but still … it was like the pulse never happened; the paint on the walls wasn't cracked or peeling, there were no marks on the metal tabletops, the cushioning on the seats wasn't frayed – heck – there was cushioning on the seats! But the few customers dotted round the place looked like ordinary people, not rich pimps looking for a place to squander money with other rich pimps. She could see why __Logan_ liked it here.__

_**********************_

_She felt a hand on her shoulder. Stumbling, she hit the ground. Something was pressing on her back - forcing her to stay there._

_She screamed! A cold cruel laugh was her only reply. Then something sharp dug into her neck … and she knew nothing more._

_***********************_

_He was crying again. The young soldier stood still, watching Zack's sleeping form in his cot, watching his tiny chest rise and fall, trying to remember her orders, ignore – but she couldn't. Her eyes flicked to Georgie's bed on the other side of the nursery, with the other carers'. The other X3 was still fast asleep._

_**********************_

_Logan, however, suddenly had a rather guilty look on his face. The two transgenics shoot each other a worried look._

_"Tell me you didn't_," Max gasped.__

_… and then the doorbell rang._


End file.
